Foraging Grounds

St. Bernard and the Theology of Crusade

by J. Marlow Gazzoli

On Easter Sunday in 1146 at Vézelay, King Louis VII took the Cross of crusade. He had announced his intention to go to Jerusalem to his court at Christmas, and it was decided that the court would meet again at Vézelay, with those who would take the Cross doing so at Easter.[1] Meanwhile the city of Edessa had fallen at the end of 1144. The bishop of Jabala, Syria, came to the papal court in November 1145 and informed Pope Eugenius III of the predicament of the Church in the East. On 1 December 1145 the pontiff published for the first time Quantum prædecessores nostri in which he called for a crusade. However, this had not reached France by Christmas when Louis made public his intention.[2] Otto of Freising says that Louis wanted to go on Crusade because his brother Philip had died before he could fulfil his own vow to do so and that this is why Louis gathered his court.[3] When the pope’s letter did reach France, King Louis wrote back to him, and the pope gave a favourable reply. On 1 March 1146 Pope Eugenius published a second version of Quantum prædecessores nostri which named Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, as the preacher of the Crusade.[4]

Easter came on 31 March 1146 and at Vézelay Louis and his nobles took up the Crosses which had been sent by the pope himself. So many were present that they had to relocate to a field outside the town, and it was there that Bernard addressed the crowds, the king at his side. Bernard incited so many that they ran out of Crosses; Bernard tore his own clothes to make more.[5] As he continued to preach around Vézelay, many miracles were reported and more took up the Cross. Rowe writes of Bernard’s preaching at Vézelay: “It was one of St. Bernard’s more glittering performances. Armed with the papal letter of authorization and reading where appropriate from Quantum prædecessores nostri, Bernard spoke out on behalf of the Crusade as only he could speak. The response was overwhelming.”[6] St. Bernard even went to Germany and enlisted the king and nobles there to join, something Pope Eugenius had not even countenanced.[7] However, St. Bernard’s success in preaching did not translate into success in battle. Once the Crusader forces had gathered in Jerusalem in 1148, they decided to attack Damascus, but the siege failed and with it the Crusade. Louis returned to France the following year. The failure reflected poorly on the pope who had called for it, and Bernard lost influence with the pope who had been a Cistercian before his election.[8]

The idea of a holy abbot, who would later be declared a saint and Doctor of the Church, preaching a Crusade may seem out of place, especially to the inhabitants of the modern world, who think of Christ as more of a figure of peace than of war. Indeed, Bernard himself was at first unsure of the Second Crusade; Evans writes, “Bernard’s involvement was slowly won. At first Bernard was reluctant, taking the view that Christian energies should be concentrated upon the needs of the flock at home and not upon problems at the interface with Islam. But he became convinced despite himself that it was his duty to support the venture and a committed Bernard never did things by halves.”[9] There is the temptation to think of Bernard as a product of a mediæval and unenlightened mindset. However, such views do not do justice to the intellect and theology of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Indeed, one can find in his writings a theology of crusade consistent with Christian principles of just war. Through an analysis of his writings on the subject, in particular his letters and the treatises De laude novæ militiæ and De consideratione, I will make explicit the theology of crusade implicit in the works of St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

In articulating a theology of crusade, Bernard is drawing on the work of St. Augustine, the father of Christian just war theory. Writing in his De civitate dei, St. Augustine says that there are exceptions to the divine prohibition against killing. These include instances where God commands the death of someone or the waging of war or when a hangman executes a criminal condemned by the State. To kill on the order of another to whom obedience is due, says Augustine, is not really to kill but to be an instrument of him who orders.[10] Writing specifically about war, he says, “The wise man, they say, will wage just wars.”[11] For Augustine, if a war is just, the wise man must fight it as a matter of course; necessity binds him. If there were no just wars, then the wise man would never fight wars. What compels him to fight the just war is the injustice committed. Augustine writes, “For it is the injustice of the opposing side that lays on the wise man the duty of waging wars; and this injustice is assuredly to be deplored by a human being, since it is the injustice of human beings, even though no necessity for war should arise from it.”[12] Thus it is the presence of injustice in the world that compels the wise man to fight. What makes a war just is its opposition to injustice.

This question of war and killing was also one of the questions mediæval Christians considered. The Gospels make clear that being a soldier is not problematic in itself, something St. Bernard was well aware of.[13] Rather than speaking in terms of injustice, Evans offers “another route by which the Christian may escape from the dilemma that he may not kill but must sometimes fight is to see legitimate warfare in terms of defending the faith.”[14] Thus Bernard says that the heretic and the infidel should be fought, though the infidel is to be fought to keep the peace. While Evans mentions Augustine, saying that his view allowed for offensive war to right wrongs,[15] she dœs not examine the relationship between Bernard and Augustine in any depth. However, rather than presenting the defence of the Faith as an alternative, it fits in with the injustice model of St. Augustine. Indeed, attacks against the Church and the spiritual are greater causes than human injustice. In this way, then, Bernard uses the principles of Augustine to defend crusades. First, a crusade is waged as a war against injustice, the injustice done to God and His Church by the infidels. Second, the crusader fights at the command of God through His vicar on Earth the pope. Bernard expresses this in two ways: First, by referring to the crusaders as doing God’s will and acting as His functionaries, and second, by giving the authority over crusades to the pope.

Having considered the broad outlines for a just war, we can turn to how St. Bernard works to specifically identify crusades as just, looking mainly at his treatise on the Knights Templar with reference to his letters, especially his letter to the people of England exhorting them to Crusade.[16] St. Bernard wrote the De laude novæ militiæ[17] in response to a request from Hugh of Payns, founder and Grand Master of the Knights Templar, which suggests a date of composition before Hugh’s death in 1136,[18] who asked the Cistercian abbot to write something for the Knights, “a sermon of exhortation, and that, since I cannot brandish the lance, I might brandish the pen against the hostile tyranny, since you assert that it would be no small help to you, if I animate with letters those whom I cannot with arms.”[19] In the opening salutation to Hugh, Bernard refers to 2 Tim 4,7, “I have fought the good fight” (Bonum certamen certavi)[20], thus identifying the cause of the Knights Templar with the bonum certamen of the Christian faith. He also dœs this in ascribing the title Miles Christi to Hugh, which comes from the same Epistle of St. Paul (2,3).[21] Thus at the very beginning of the work the two principles of just war are present. The fight of the Templars is the fight of Christ, so it is just, and they are the soldiers of Christ who fight at the command of Justice Himself.

The exhortation proper begins with an explicit identification of the work of the Knights with the work of Christ. Just as Christ came into the Holy Land to fight the “princes of darkness” (tenebrarum principes), so now are His knights fighting those who serve the same princes.[22] Bernard is not speaking in a metaphorical sense. He calls the Muslims “the attendants of the same” (ipsorum satellites), the ipsorum referring to tenebrarum principes.[23] He makes this same identification of the Muslims as the servants of the Devil in his letter to the English people, in which he says that it is the Devil himself who is behind the attack on the Holy Land.[24] So the Knights are fighting the very same war which Christ Himself fought, the most just of wars.[25] Furthermore, in calling the Muslims satellites of the tenebrarum principes, Bernard is setting up a contrast with the Knights, who are the servants of the Light, which “shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend It” (in tenebris lucet, et tenebræ non comprehenderunt).[26] The Light is fighting these forces of darkness “in the hand of His powerful men” (in manu fortium suorum), the Knights Templar.[27] Christ is acting through the Knights, “even now making the redemption of His people, and again raising a horn of salvation for us in the house of David His servant” (faciens etiam nunc redemptionem plebis suæ, et rursum erigens cornu salutis nobis in domo David pueri sui).[28] Throughout this first passage, St. Bernard refers to the Benedictus, the canticle of Zacharias in the Gospel of St. Luke,[29] which Zacharias sings at the circumcision of his son St. John the Baptist. This canticle tells of God fulfilling His promise of redemption to the people of Isræl and of the special rôle John will have to play in this.[30] Thus St. Bernard is setting up the Knights as a latter day John the Baptist, who will, just as St. John did, go before the face of the Lord to prepare His paths.[31] This identifies their military action as a way of bringing about the salvation of souls and righting the injustice of fallen man. Moreover, this identification of the Knights as a second John the Baptist shows them to be the servants of God, prophets of the All-High[32] who will give testimony to the Light.[33]

St. Bernard emphasizes the novelty of the knighthood espoused by the Knights Templar. The work begins, “A new type of knighthood is heard which has recently emerged on the Earth.”[34] The novelty lies in the fact that they fight in both the physical and the spiritual realms. To do one or the other is not remarkable, says St. Bernard, but to do both is praiseworthy, especially because of its novelty.[35] The Knights Templar are thus milites Christi in both the allegorical and the quite literal sense. They would rather die for Christ than live,[36] and this should not be surprising given what St. Bernard says about such a death: to die in battle is to die a martyr, and such a good death is better than victory. Moreover, he says that to die in battle is better than to die in bed, since the former is a more glorious death.[37] Beginning with St. Stephen the Proto-martyr, the martyrs of the Church were those who were killed by the ruling authorities for professing the Christian faith. Needless to say, such a martyrdom is strikingly different from the martyrdom suggested by St. Bernard. Whereas the martyrs of the early Church are put to a death which they accept, the Knights are engaged in bloody battle, killing those who would send them to Christ. Thus St. Bernard is drawing on the premise that the Knights are doing the salvific work of Christ, and this leads to the conclusion that to die doing this work of Christ is to die for the Faith, to die a martyr. Moreover, in speaking of glory, Bernard is not speaking human of human glory. To die a martyr, in battle or not, is to die a glorious death in that it gives glory to God, more so than death in one’s bed.

St. Bernard contrasts at length the new knighthood of the Knights Templar with the worldly knighthood of their contemporaries. Indeed, while the Templars are militia (“knighthood”), the worldly knights are malitia (“badness”),[38] an effective and amusing rhetorical ploy on Bernard’s part. The worldly knight is at much greater risk in battle, since he faces the loss not only of his body but also of his soul. “O truly holy and safe militia, and absolutely free from that twofold danger, by which that type of men is frequently endangered, whensoever Christ is not the cause of their fighting.”[39] To fight for a just cause is good, but to fight for ill is always wrong, just as the sin of murder weighs down both those who die and those who conquer, since to conquer in sin is no victory at all. “If the cause of the fighter had been good, the end of his fight will not be bad, just as the end will not be judged good, where the cause is not good, and an unjust intention. … But if you prevail and by the will of either conquering or of avenging peradventure kill a man, you live a homicide. Moreover, it is not profitable for the dear or the living, for the conqueror or the conquered to be a homicide.”[40] Even self-defence is scorned by Bernard since the soul is of greater worth than the body. To kill in self-defence, he writes, “indeed, I would not have called this a good victory, since of the two evils, to die in the body is lighter than to die in the soul.”[41] The greater gravity of the death of the soul also justifies war against the enemies of the Church. If it is just to fight those who kill the bodies unjustly, how much more just is it to kill those who kill the souls with error and false religion. Thus worldly knighthood brings sin, death, and everlasting pain. Bernard even mocks these knights who preen and dress up; they are not even competent knights, and despite the prick of their conscience, their vice leads them to war.[42]

This idea of judging knights on moral criteria predates the formation of the military orders. This development began in the eleventh century and was greatly influenced by the Peace of God and Truce of God movements.[43] Consequently, the moral taxonomization of knights was a common idea starting from the mid-eleventh century, and the resulting ill-will towards enemies of peace demanded that violence be justified as defence. “Accordingly,” writes Grabois, “the ‘good’ knights were those who fought in order to protect the churches, the poor and the oppressed.”[44] While this taxonomization began in the eleventh, it became fully developed in the twelfth century. Thus in writing the De laude, Bernard is framing the Templars within an already existent moral framework. Grabois writes, “His original contribution to the idea resided in his interpretation of this dichotomy.”[45] In the context of the Crusade, this sets up the worldly knights as models of the type of injustice just wars are waged against. Bernard plays off this to show the Knights Templar as fighters of injustice, particularly injustice against God and the Church.

In contrast to the malitia, the Knights Templar, however, do not sin in killing the enemies of Christ and do not fear death. Killing and being killed for Christ merits eternal glory, not eternal damnation. St. Bernard writes: “By the former he surely acquires for Christ, by the latter Christ is acquired, Who surely and graciously accepts the death of His enemy for vengeance and more graciously offers Himself to the soldier for consolation.”[46] Thus if the knight kills, it is for Christ, and if he dies, it is for his own benefit as he gœs to Christ. It is not a man which he kills but evil, non homicida, sed … malicida (“not homicide, but … malicide).[47] In making this distinction, Bernard is again going back to Augustine. Just wars are waged against injustice, and this is what Bernard means when he says that this is malicide rather than homicide. One interpretation would suggest that the enemy of Christ’s Church has somehow ceased to be a person. However, such a reading is not correct when one considers what St. Bernard has to say about the Jews. In his letter to England, he specifically enjoins the English not to persecute the Jews in any way, citing the Psalms. Dispersed and subject to the rule of Christians, they serve as living reminders of Christ’s death and man’s redemption. Trusting in the words of St. Paul, the Christian should wait for the eventual conversion and salvation of the Jews, but until then their physical death only avails unto them spiritual death. Tolerance should likewise be applied to the pagans if they were subject to Christians and not engaged in war against them. Thus Bernard considers the acts of tolerating the Jews and killing the Muslims two sides of the same piety.[48] Thus when St. Bernard says that the knight is not killing man but evil, he is hearkening back to the principle annunciated by Augustine that he who kills under obedience dœs not kill. Thus the knight on Crusade is not guilty of the sin of murder because he fights injustice by the command of God through the pope.

Nevertheless, Bernard writes, “In the death of the pagan dœs the Christian glory because Christ is glorified,”[49] but this must be read with what follows: “In the death of the Christian, the liberality of the King is opened, when the soldier to be rewarded is led out. Then the just man will rejoice over him, when he will have seen punishment.”[50] God’s justice is manifested both in the punishment of the wicked and in the reward of His fallen,[51] and this is what gives glory to Christ and why the Christian rejoices: because the justice of God is established and the injustice of sin is removed. This is why Bernard says, “He is plainly the vindicator of Christ against those who do evil, and he is reckoned the defender of Christians.”[52] Thus for Bernard the Knights Templar, and by extension all crusaders, are the servants of God, captains in His army, fighting by His command, and a crusade is a war fought by His will.[53]

While defending a crusade as a just war seems to modern eyes to be an expansion of just war theory, Bernard dœs not go as far as St. Augustine. For Augustine it is the presence of injustice that merits the waging of war; a just war dœs not have to be purely defensive. Bernard, on the other hand, says that the pagans are to be killed only if it is necessary to stop the persecution of Christians. He writes, “Now, however, it is better that they be killed than that the rod of sinners be left over the lot of the just, lest the just perchance extend their hands to iniquity.”[54] Thus Bernard limits the extent of just war more strictly than Augustine. A crusade, therefore, is a defensive war waged to defend the souls of Christians under attack by infidels. So, rather than an expansion of the grounds of just war, Bernard is actually limiting the grounds for just war proposed by Augustine, such that Bernard’s theology of crusade can be said to place more emphasis on mercy than Augustine’s theory places emphasis on justice.

The two principles of the crusade as a just war (it is against injustice and ordered by God) also appear in Bernard’s letters, written during the preaching of the Crusade and after its failure, and in his De consideratione, written for Pope Eugenius after the Crusade. After Louis announced his intention to go on Crusade at Christmas 1145, Bernard wrote to Pope Eugenius concerning a French bishop whom Eugenius had disciplined. In rebuking the pontiff, Bernard also says that the situation could poorly affect Louis in “the good work which he has so whole-heartedly begun under your encouragement.”[55] Likewise, in another letter to Eugenius, after the failure of the Second Crusade[56], he calls upon the pope to aid the Eastern Church and defend the Holy Land, a job which falls to him specifically as pope.[57] Bernard writes, “In this second passion of Christ we must draw those two swords that were drawn during the first passion. And who is there to draw them but you? … You hold the position of Peter, and you ought also to have his zeal.”[58] Saying that Christ is being crucified again in Jerusalem, Bernard implores the pope that, while others ignore it, he cannot who is in the place of Peter. Indeed, Bernard says that the love of God and His Church cannot but impel Eugenius, as pope, to call for a Crusade.[59]

Bernard’s letter to the people of England is particularly relevant for it is a record of how Bernard preached the Crusade. Given that it is addressed to the people, it dœs not touch on the authority of the pope in a crusade. However, it is full of references to the crusade as just and to the crusaders as doing the will of God. Bernard begins the letter by saying that he writes to England of the Crusade because he is concerned for their salvation. As mentioned above, he identifies the Muslims as soldiers of the Devil. He speaks of the many sinners the Holy Land has converted since its reconquest by the Christians and how this infuriates the Devil. “The evil one sees this and is enraged, he gnashes his teeth and withers away in fury.”[60] Thus the Devil inspires the Muslims to attack the Holy Land. Of course, says Bernard, God could stop them without the help of men, but He dœs not do so out of mercy for His people, offering them the Crusade as a path to sanctification. Bernard writes, “For God has pity on his people and on those who have grievously fallen away and has prepared for them a means of salvation.”[61] Thus the Crusade is not the act of a vengeful God but of a merciful and loving one. As in De laude, Bernard castigates the worldly knights and bids them fight for Christians instead of against them. Echoing the De laude he writes, “O mighty soldiers, O men of war, you have a cause for which you can fight without danger to your souls; a cause in which to conquer is glorious and for which to die is gain.”[62] And if they do not join the Crusade for the sake of God, Bernard bids them join the Crusade for their own sakes, to obtain everlasting life.[63] Thus in this letter Bernard presents the Crusade as war of justice: to undo the injustice of the Muslims and to aid in the justification of Christians.

In De consideratione Bernard compares the crusaders of the Second Crusade with the other tribes of Isræl when they fought against the tribe of Benjamin. Even though they fought a just war by God’s command, they twice did not succeed. Bernard writes, “And so just men went into a just battle, the first time with God’s approval and the second time at his command, and still they failed.”[64] In this work, Bernard places the responsibility to call a crusade on the pope alone. Speaking of the failed Crusade, Bernard says, “We rushed into this, not aimlessly but at your command, or rather, through you at God’s command.”[65] But just as Moses failed in bringing the Jews to the promised land because of their sins, so Eugenius cannot be held responsible for the failure of the Crusade. When Bernard asks how a crusade can be known to be God’s will, he says it is the authority of the pope which makes this known. “You answer for me and for yourself, according to what you have heard and seen, or certainly according to your inspiration from God.”[66] Indeed, it is the pope alone who has the authority and responsibility to call for a crusade. Bernard writes, “Now, if important affairs should be considered by important men, who is as competent as you to consider this matter, since you have no equal in all the world? It is for you to do this according to the wisdom and power given you from above.”[67] Thus not only are the Crusaders directly fighting as the soldiers and servants of God, they are also indirectly under His authority for they fight at the command of the Supreme Pontiff.

Thus there are two principles at the heart of Bernard’s theology of crusade. First, a crusade is a war waged against injustice to God and His Church. Second, a crusade is waged by the authority of God, which is manifested by the command of the Roman pontiff. In articulating his theology of crusade, Bernard is drawing on the just war tradition of Augustine and on the growing moral critique of mediæval chivalry. While the idea of crusades has become unpopular in recent centuries, Bernard’s justification is perfectly in keeping with the just war tradition of Augustine. Indeed, the principles Bernard annunciates are more limiting than those of Augustine, since a crusade must be defensive. Nevertheless, based on the principles of Augustine, Bernard argues convincingly that a crusade is a form of just war, if not the highest form, since it is directly in the service of God Himself.

NOTES

[2] John G. Rowe, “The Origins of the Second Crusade: Pope Eugenius III, Bernard of Clairvaux and Louis VII of France,” in The Second Crusade and the Cistercians, ed. Michæl Gervers (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 79-80, 82-3.

[13] Evans, 167-8; Bernard of Clairvaux, Liber ad Milites Templi de laude novæ militiæ, in Tractatus et opuscula, eds. Jean Leclerq and Henri Rochais, Vol. 3 of Sancti Bernardi Opera (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1963), 5 [English: In Praise of the New Knighthood, trans. Conrad Greenia, in Treatises III, Vol. 7 of The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1977)]. References are to the section numbers of the text. Both the Latin and English were consulted, but the work is referred to under the Latin title, except when notes from the English edition are cited. All direct quotations come from the Latin with my own translation, consulted with the English.

[16] Bernard of Clairvaux, Letter 391, in The Letters of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, trans. Bruno Scott James (London: Burns Oates, 1953), 1-2. Letters are cited using the numbering and division of sections used by James. Where appropriate, the traditional numbering of the letter is given in brackets. In the case of Letter 391, James says that it is the same as Bernard’s letter to the bishops of eastern France [363] (James, 463).

[18] Malcolm Barber, The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 44. Barber himself dates the work to sometime in early part of the decade (xxi).

[25]V. id., De laude, 5. Bernard argues that since the Gospel allows Christians to serve as soldiers, then there is no reason why soldiery in defence of the Holy Land could be forbidden, for such soldiers have the best claim to soldiery.

[64] Bernard of Clairvaux, Five Books On Consideration: Advice to a Pope, trans. John D. Anderson and Elizabeth T. Keenan, Vol. 13 of The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1976), II.3.